Conductive lignin-composites for smart consumer electronics casings

Purpose and goal:

Consumer electronics industry is moving towards sustainable materials. Bio-plastics is a good alternative, but are presently more expensive. The goal is to replace petroleum-based plastics used in consumer electronics casings, with lignin-composites, while making it competitive with RISE’s method of utilizing functional additives for value-added properties, such as ‘smartness’.

In this project we prepared lignin-based composites with specific additives such that when the material is pressed, it generates a electric pulse. This makes it a ´smart material´. Expected results and effects:

In the project, we developed methods to introduce additives such as graphene and peizoelectric materials that can be used for producing materials and coating by extrusion techniques. Samples were extruded and injection molded into standard shapes. These samples where then measured by applying pressure and we could detect electric pulses when pressed.

Since the base material can be used as casings for electronic devices, when this ´smart material´ is pressed, it could send a signal to ´turn-on´ or some other feature in the device. Approach and implementation:

The lignin composite samples from Lignin Industries were modified and samples were prepared by industrially relevant methods, here injection molding. Therefore the main hypothesis, namely, can we increase the value proposition of their material by including ´smartness´ has been verified. To move forward to implementation, we need to include final end users, e.g. device manufacturers and carry out a larger scale project with test samples according to the user-specification.